Saturday, May 30, 2015

New movie review: Love at First Fight

For the purposes of this conversation, let’s redefine what
we mean when we say “summer movie.” I am sure most of you who care to will have
seen Avengers: Age of Ultron or Mad Max: Fury Road by now. Perhaps, you
are looking forward to Jurassic World
or some other big-money blockbuster. These are the movies we talk about when we
talk about summer movie-going now. It is not a problem. It is just the way it
is. But, let’s pretend for a moment it does not have to be that way.

Think very hard about your childhood or teenage years or,
hell, even that weird nether-zone between the end of high school and the
beginning of adulthood. What defined those times best? For a vast majority of
you, it was not robots, explosions, and non-stop action – unless you spent your
summers at the movies, but bear with me here. No, summer means lazy days
hanging out with your friends, not taking your part-time job quite seriously
enough, and maybe a new girl or guy catching your eye.

The French festival hit Love
at First Fight is one of the few movies to get the feeling of summer just
right. From first-time feature director Thomas Cailley, Love at First Fight has an innate understanding of what it is like
to watch the sun come up, go down, and come back up without having truly done
anything during the long spaces in between. The days blend together into a
haze, and the future is just an abstract concept as far off and insignificant
as boats on the horizon.

Madeleine (Adèle Haenel) is a college dropout living with
her well-off parents who plans to join the army. She signs up for an intensive
two-week training course with the Army Rangers, not out of a sense of
nationalistic pride but for fear of an impending apocalypse and a desire to be
prepared. She is a smart, strong young woman with a fiercely independent
streak. She is the kind of heroine we rarely see in American films – give or
take a Tomorrowland.

If Madeleine is perhaps too focused on her preparations for
the end of days, Arnaud (Kévin Azaïs) maybe has too little focus at all. He crashes
parties with his friends, shows the minimum amount of interest in the army to
get the free blow-up mattress the recruiters promised, and generally seems unenthused
by the family landscaping business. Arnaud and Madeleine strike up an uneasy
friendship – because she is guarded and he lacks confidence – as he builds a
pool house in her family’s backyard. He signs up for the training course in
part to follow her but also to give his days a sense of structure, direction,
and purpose.

These early passages are shot through with care and
sensitivity by Cailley and cinematographer David Cailley, the director’s
brother. There is a glossiness to everything that evokes youth, nostalgia, and
memory in ways that are both universal and specific to these characters’
experiences. After a long night out at the club, it is dawn, and Madeleine and
Arnaud are walking back home with two of his friends. The friends stop at the
beach, strip down, and run into the water. Madeleine decides she would rather
go home.

After trying for a moment to convince her to stay, Arnaud
lets her leave. We do not see her walk away, but through Azaïs’ performance and
the way camera lingers on his face as he watches her, we know instinctively
what he feels. Her leaving marks the end of one day but the beginning of
another, and as Arnaud wades slowly into the glistening water, the sun hovers
at the edge of the frame, reminding us of what the sun always reminds us of:
the march of time and the endless possibilities of the new day.

Haenel and Azaïs are marvelous throughout the movie, and
Cailley’s breezy script establishes their characters early and with efficiency.
Madeleine is the kind of person who thinks nothing of strapping 30 pounds of
weights to her back and dropping into the ocean – whatever it takes to be
prepared. Arnaud, on the other hand, will drop his work at a moment’s notice to
ride hours out of town on his motorbike to do a favor. That the little work he
accomplished is wiped away by a storm in his absence only drives the point home
further. To him, nothing is so important it cannot be put off until later.

This established dichotomy sets up a beautiful switch when
they arrive at the training camp. He takes to it easily, and she is absolutely
stifled. The reversal is well earned and perfectly in keeping with who these
characters are. Of course Arnaud takes to the regimentation of the army. He
just needs someone to point him in a direction, and he will start walking.
Madeleine, however, is not built to take orders or become a cog in some greater
wheel. Her goal is to be the whole damn machine.

Because this is no place for her, she heads off into the
woods, and because as ever, he just needs a direction, he follows her. This
sets up the film’s gorgeous final act, which I will not spoil here. Suffice it
to say they learn what it really takes to survive apart from the rest of the
world. “Knowing how to pass the time – not doing or thinking about anything in
particular – that’s surviving,” he tells her. No matter where you are or who
you are with, life is about filling those endless days when nothing may happen,
but it feels like anything could. That is survival. That is summer.